Question

I’m probably overlooking something, but I got a class “parse” with a function “getAllElements”. In the main script I import parse using

from parseXML import parse. 

Then I do

parse = parse(file) 

which works fine. But when I do

print parseXML.parse(file).getAllElements()

I get the following error:

NameError: global name 'getAllElements' is not defined 

Below is the code. Where am I going wrong?

Edit: changed the code after comment

class parse:
    # Constructor
    def __init__(self, file):
        # parse the xml file into a tree
        tree = xml.parse('/homes/ndeklein/test.featureXML')
        # Get the root node of the xml file
        self.rootElement = tree.getroot()
        # Set self.parent to rootElement, because the first element won't have a parent (because it is the root)
        self.parent = 'rootElement'
        # dictionary that contains the parent -> child relation
        self.parentChildDict = {}

    # Go recursively through all the elements in the xml file, starting at the choosen rootElement, until only leaves (elements that don't contain elements) are left
    # Return all the elements from the xml file
    def getAllElements(self):
        # if this is the first time this parent is seen:
        #     make elementDict with parent as key and child as value in a list
        if not self.parentChildDict.has_key(self.parent):
            self.parentChildDict[self.parent] = [self.rootElement]
        # else: add the child to the parent dictionary
        else:
            self.parentChildDict[self.parent].append(self.rootElement)
        for node in self.rootElement:
            # if the len of rootElement > 0 (there are more elements in the element):
            #    set self.parent to be node and recursively call getAllElements
            if len(self.rootElement) > 0:
                self.parent = node
                getAllElements()
        return self.parentChildDict

.

#!/usr/bin/env python

# author: ndeklein
# date: 08/02/2012
# function: calls out the script

import parseXML
import xml.etree.cElementTree as xml
import sys

#Parse XML directly from the file path
file = '/homes/ndeklein/EP-B1.featureXML'
# parse the xml file into a tree
print parseXML.parse(file).getAllElements()

Answer 1

It’s your import and style of call, as Praveen alluded to.

Because you import in this fashion:

from foo import bar

You don’t need to (and in fact shouldn’t) explicitly declare foo in your call.

bar.baz()

Not

foo.bar.baz()

So in your case try the call:

parse(file).getAllElements()

But you still need to address the naked call in your recursion:
getAllElements() probably should be self.getAllElements()